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Welcome to Oram Security Consultants,
Greetings!
In February's newsletter, we address protecting your family at home, the importance of security officers in today's society, safety at work and more!
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Safety at work
The American Society for Industrial Security International (ASIS) has published guidelines for Workplace Violence and Response.
Below is an excerpt regarding warning signs that can point to potential violence. Private security managers and their corporate clients may find this information helpful in crafting and carrying out prevention and response procedures. At a minimum, security officers should be trained in how to spot and recognize the early warning signs of violence. These include:
- Threats, threatening behavior, frequent aggressive outbursts, or excessive displays of temper
- A history of threats or violent acts
- Ominous fascination with weapons and/or references to weapons, violent media content, or violent events
- Verbal abuse of coworkers and customers, or harassment through phone calls or e-mails
- Bizarre or offensive comments and behavior that include violent content
- Holding grudges, inability to handle criticism, blaming others
- Chronic, hypersensitive complaints about persecution or injustice
(Source: ASIS International, www.asisonline.org) |
Protecting your family at home.
Most residential
burglars devote little if any time to the advance planning of any
specific break-in. Their crimes are, for the most part, crimes of
opportunity. They pick what appears to be an easy mark. If their
advance checking and closer examination reveal a greater risk than
anticipated, they move onto a safer target. The more you can do to keep
your home from looking like an easy target, the safer you are. There
are also many steps that you can take to minimize your loss and improve
your chances of recovery if a break-in does occur.
The
first step in improving overall security is to take a hard look at the
security measures already in your home. To help you with this
task, OSC uses a Residential Security Survey. Conducting a security
survey is important. Your home cannot be adequately protected until
weaknesses are identified and corrected.
Here are a few tips:
- Place flood lights on the outside of your home and connect them to motion censors.
- Place a sign in your yard or window stating that there is an alarm. Do not use a sign that states which alarm service is used.
- Keep shrubs and trees away from your windows. They will block the view of Law Enforcement from seeing if your windows have been broken.
- If you have a window in either your front or rear door, make sure that the deadbolt you use is set up for key use on both sides. If there is a latch on the inside the criminal could break the glass and turn the lock open.
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The First Line of Homeland Security:
The Security Officer 
Security
is a rapidly evolving industry. As the needs of business and industry
grow, so do the responsibilities of the private security officer. With
this increase in responsibility there is a growing demand for
responsible, well-trained personnel to fulfill security and safety
needs.The security officer of today is responsible for:
- Relations with employees, clients and the public
- Physical security
- Safety
- Fire Protection
- Access control of both persons and packages
- Employee theft prevention
- Investigation
- Developing and initiating emergency plans
- Traffic control
- Crowd Management
These responsibilities are very important and they must be performed with the minimum degree of error.
OSC has training courses for security personnel that are specifically designed to help Security Officers become the true security professional they need to be.
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Veteran Terrorist Hunters Say US Vulnerable to Attack
by Anthony L. Kimery
Friday, 06 February 2009
HSToday
"The intelligence from my perspective is pretty clear in so far as what Al Qaeda's intentions are'
When former Vice President Dick Cheney earlier this week said
there's a "high probability" that terrorists will attempt a
catastrophic nuclear or biological attack and implied that Obama
administration policies have weakened the Intelligence Community to the
extent that it might now be impossible to detect such an attack, it
made a lot of observers wince on the left and right.
Veteran US counterterror officials HSToday.us spoke to said
while intelligence capabilities under the Obama administration aren't
currently likely to be as deficient or as policy-unwise as Cheney
implied, there certainly are crisis-level vulnerabilities on
the home-front that Al Qaeda or other terrorist organizations bent on
seriously doing damage to the United States could strike at which could
deliver a devastating blow during the next 12 to 24 months while the
government attempts to rescue the nation from its weakened economy.
The US's seriously destabilized economy-which is at least as bad as
it's been in 30 years-has opened a fissure in the nation's
vulnerability to a catastrophic terrorist attack that potentially could
in fact economically cripple the nation, the counterterrorists believe.
Given that Al Qaeda and affiliated terrorist groups desire to strike
at America's economic stability, a catastrophic attack or attacks
across the nation anytime soon would certainly contribute in a big way
to the nation's existing downward spiral, the officials said. "And Al
Qaeda has to be looking at this as an opportunity ... looking at every
which way they can possibly pull off a spectacular attack," one of the
officials said.
Continuing, the official said, "imagine 9/11s in every major city.
We're still facing a very real threat-it has not diminished, and I'm
quite sure President Obama and his senior national security advisors
understand this since they've been privileged to see the actual
intelligence that lays it all out; at least I hope they do. If they
don't, then someone needs to get them up to speed. But I'm sure they
do."
The counterterror experts pointed to the recent undeniable exposure
of the gross deficiencies in the federal government being able to
swiftly detect and immediately halt distribution of food borne
pathogens as an "example of one of the many vulnerabilities" in
homeland security through which terrorists could launch a biological
attack.
Speaking at a recent Washington Institute Special Policy Forum, Ken Wainstein, former assistant
to President Bush for homeland security and counterterrorism,
stressed that the gravest terrorism threat from "terrorist
organizations [is their acquiring] weapons of mass destruction and [using] them against
us, our homeland, or our allies."
"Biological weapons are the most likely" terrorist WMD threat right now,"
agreed Charles "Sam" Faddis, a 20-year veteran CIA officer who was a National
Counterterrorism Center department chief overseeing "worldwide operations
against the terrorist WMD target" when he retired from the clandestine services
last May.
Faddis earlier told HSToday.us that, yes, terrorists are
probably more likely to try to use biological weapons in the near future, noting
that such an attack would "be devastating and it would totally cause
catastrophic casualties."
"And there are other vulnerabilities" that could be exploited to
carry out a catastrophic attack, one of the counterterror officials
said.
Rejecting notions by some former IC counterterrorists that Al Qaeda
for whatever reason is unwilling to try to attack the US directly
again, the officials HSToday.us talked to said they do not necessarily "buy into that line of thinking."
"The intelligence from my perspective is pretty clear in so far as what
Al Qaeda's intentions are-make no mistake about that," one said,
pointing to Cheney's remarks in his interview this week about planned
attacks that were stopped but the details about which remain
classified.
Cheney said he's confident that the classified files on these
thwarted attacks will some day be made public and will prove that
significant planned attacks were halted.
"The fact is there have been attacks in the works we've learned about that we've managed to stop," the official told HSToday.us, adding, "and Al Qaeda and its affiliates continue to work on plans to attack us."
While the counterterrorists split with Cheney on the efficacy of
so-called "enhanced interrogations," they agreed with him on the use of
wide-ranging communications intercepts when there's "clear-cut"
intelligence that specific communications are related to terrorism.
But the bottomline of what the officials said is that the crisis
America finds itself in is and of itself a serious vulnerability that
makes a concerted effort to pull off a catastrophic attack so
attractive to terrorists.
"Which means we still need to devote resources-sooner than later-to
start plugging all the holes in security we know about," one of the
officials said.
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Are you on Facebook?
So are we! Oram Security now has a page on Facebook. Type Oram Security Consultants into the search bar at the top
of the Facebook page to find us.
Become a fan today.
We will be posting additional security tips, recommendations and current information
on our classes!
Please note that we currently have a discussion running on our page concerning
your security on facebook.
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Home Alarm Systems
An increasing number of
insurance companies are
requiring that homeowners install
burglar and fire alarms in order to
obtain a homeowner's policy. Most will grant you a discount if one is installed.
The trend began about five years ago
after a national study by an
economics professor at Temple
University showed that a monitored
security alarm system made
burglaries three times less likely
and dropped the average loss by
$400. About eighty percent of
Hawaii's insurance companies
now follow the practice compared
to just a handful five years ago. |
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